A standard chip card holds an integrated circuit and is of flat rectangular shape with one corner cut off for indexing purposes. One face of the card is provided with a group of contact pads by means of which connection can be made to the integrated circuit. In use the card is fitted to a holder, for instance mounted in the bottom of a cell-phone battery compartment, where it is held with these contact pads pressed against respective resilient contacts of a contact assembly.
Such a contact assembly for a chip card, in particular for a subscriber-identity-module (SIM) card of an electronic device such as a chip-card reader, mobile telephone, or the like, has a contact support made of insulating material and contact elements anchored therein for connecting the contact pads of the chip card with printed conductors of circuitry contained in the device, such as a printed-circuit board. Each such contact element has a contact part that engages the chip card, a connecting part for contacting the circuitry, and an anchor part for fixing to the contact support.
The anchor parts are attached to the insulating material of the contact support usually by extrusion coating. The contact part or end of the contact element bears resiliently on the contact pads of the chip card, and the other connecting end or part or each contact element is normally soldered to the printed conductor for the circuitry. This is usually done according to the surface mounting technique (SMT). The connecting ends can also form press-on contacts which bear resiliently the printed-circuit conductors.
Such assemblies are described in German patents is 42 18 970 and 44 11 345 as well as in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,775,949 and 6,863,537.